Dynamics Web Services - Business Mash-Ups; Composite Apps; Integrations
Web Services in Dynamics Wave 1 releases. What is the intent behind them?
The core vision behind what we are doing is Roles Based Productivity. To deliver on this vision, you have to start with “People” and really connect them up to their “work” (i.e. process). In the real world most people’s work is split across multiple applications and the “seams” show. Web Services is the foundational infrastructure that helps us get rid of the “seams”.
Web Services support in Dynamics is helping us with the following scenarios:
1. Business “Mash-Ups”. What we recently released with Dynamics Snap is a good example of this. We use the Web Services exposed by Dynamics to enable users of Outlook to do Time Entry or Vacation Scheduling directly without having to leave Outlook. We also enable you write a letter to a customer using Word wherein you want to look up Business data from Dynamics regarding that customer’s cases, or invoices, or any other business entity. You can think of this class of applications as “mash-ups” of Office and Dynamics. You can also extend this to doing “mash-ups” of Dynamics with the Web. A good example of this is a sandbox sample code on how to “mash-up” CRM with MapPoint (Mapping in CRM). Also another very useful tool that we will be releasing soon (on CRM Sandbox) enables you to create an RSS feed for any CRM entity. This for example will allow you to get an RSS feed with the latest opportunities or cases on any PC or device with a browser/RSS reader.
2. Composite Apps. Many business processes today span the boundaries of structured/un-structured & formal process/ad-hoc workflow. Take for example – Recruiting. Your finance person creates a requisition in Dynamics. Then you have your recruiting person login to Sharepoint portal to initiate an interview process and finally additional folks in HR and IT get involved in on-boarding the employee. This is a business process that is composite of formal data and process (creation and approval of requisitions) in Dynamics and more semi-structured/ad-hoc workflow (interview process) and both need to be linked together into one seamless collaborative business process. Again with Dynamics exposing Web Services and exposing them enables you build these Composite Collaborative Apps. We will focus on building such apps on top of Sharepoint and you will see us do several demos of these type of apps at Convergence.
3. Integrations. The more “classical” use of Web Services has been to reduce the expense of integrations. Within Microsoft our IT is using Web Services to support the integration of Dynamics with some of the other legacy Enterprise apps such as Siebel and SAP . A good example of this the XBOX team using Dynamics to manage their production planning, while still integrating with financials in SAP. We are see this as an increasing trend in our Enterprise accounts where Dynamics is being used to “surround” legacy enterprise applications to take advantage of the more user friendly user experience and a more agile customization model. At Convergence we will talk more about some additional connectors to these legacy Enterprise Apps that we will make available for Dynamics, building on work that the BizTalk team has done.
The Web Services work is the foundation that enables the above three application scenarios in support of our overall vision of Roles Based Productivity. We will talk a lot more about this at Convergence. Our goal with our Web Services work is to ground this in Community feedback, just as we have done with our User Experience. We want really anchor the Web Services we work on and their behavior on real world application needs. I am trying to convince our program management team to have Web Services lounge areas similar to how our UX team reaches out to the Convergence audience… I have some additional convincing to do!!
(PS: I am told that Jeff Hensel and others are doing focus group on Web Services. So I don't need to worry about convincing anybody that reaching out to the community as we define further advances in Web Services is the way to go...)
Satya Nadella is corporate vice president responsible for leading the Product Group within Microsoft Business Solutions.
Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992 and has held a variety of marketing, product development and general management roles. Before taking on his current role, Nadella was responsible for launching and leading Microsoft bCentral, the leading Internet service providing Web presence, communications, customer marketing and e-commerce tools to small businesses. Nadella became part of Business Solutions when the division was formed by combining the bCentral, Great Plains and Navision a/s groups.
Before that, he was general manager for the Commerce Platforms Group and led the development efforts for Microsoft Commerce Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server. Nadella was also a key member of several advanced technology incubation efforts inside Microsoft, including interactive television (ITV) and digital rights management (DRM). Nadellas first assignment at Microsoft was in the Windows Developer Relations group, where he was a program manager.
Before joining Microsoft, Nadella was a member of the technology staff at Sun Microsystems Inc.
Nadella has a masters degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and a masters degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.
